When Taking Offence is More Profitable than Facing the Truth.
Words changed, memorials removed, and uncomfortable histories wiped, towards an outcome of Systemic Racism.
“The past has a disconcerting habit of bursting, uninvited and unwelcome, into the present”
- David Olusoga, the Observer, Sat 11 Jul 2015
So true.
The image in the header above is a glimpse of design effort that went into one of the biggest injustices ever carried out by one set of humans against another in known history.
Slavery.
Look at it again.
Think of being one of those manacled individuals in such an environment, for weeks, after being ripped away from family and friends to an unknown future of extreme fear, seemingly forever.
Pretty shocking, huh?
That image, per the source in the credit, comes from an artefact in Bristol Museum.
For me as a practicing Systems Engineer, the shock upon looking at the picture of the header image comes from a realisation that just about everyone in those days was involved in the atrocity. People just like me, Engineers, working now and then myself even in Bristol, to “Earn a crust”, creating things which in a different age might be looked upon with horror.
We are reminded that the beautiful City of Bristol has as its heritage a truly horrible history at the heart of the slavery industry in UK, by things like the above artefact, but also every day in the streets of Bristol by various memorials, artefacts, and even street names, in the memory of the figures most historically famous.
Those historical artifacts are complemented more recently as a kind of artistic commentary, by many modern works of art including street paintings from the infamous cultural artist “Banksy”, and others, resulting in a uniquely, rich, multi-cultural, cosmopolitan City.
Last weekend, the weekend of 07/06/2020, we saw some of the biggest ever marches against racism in UK, with people of all colours uniting to protest the worldwide-shocking death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in US.
Hurrah.
It is high time we started to actually do something about the long-standing problem of racism.
Of course it absolutely dates back to slavery.
Of that there is no doubt.
But how exactly it connects with slavery is what we need to get right, to ensure it never comes back to haunt again.
In the protests, we see lots of positive things happening, but we also see some not so good things happening as well.
Like looting, and vandalism.
Those things do not add to the cause, they only remove from it. There are always victims of things destroyed or stolen.
In the case of Bristol, possibly worst of all is the removal and destruction of those historical artefacts reminding us of Bristol’s rich heritage, formed from both good and awful things.
The statue of Edward Colston was torn down and thrown in the river by the crowd, to the clamour of a huge crowd of protestors.
Besides the crowd taking the law into their own hands in the same way as frenzied crowds also carry out lynchings;
Most disturbing is how many of the people affected somehow seem to be convinced that destroying artefacts evidencing their own historical and ongoing mis-treatment is a good idea.
But there is an obvious explanation.
Brainwashing
The truth is, that this brainwashing wasn’t done just in the past few weeks since the fury over the murder of George Floyd began.
It has been done throughout the history of slavery.
Because it still makes profit for some.
Before I guide readers towards evidence that this phenomenon has at least been known about for a very long time, it is actually necessary for me to warn that the very title of the artifact I will direct to might be offensive to some, especially the academic community, as it is highly critical of that establishment, and was written at a time before many words were banned.
Be aware also that the criticisms of the article includes considerations of people of all colours, including of course, white.
I would argue at the very least that this article is of high value, as it identifies a real mechanism of structural racism, the effect of brainwashing.
What was the effect of banning “Offensive” words?
We, the gentle readers, are somewhat repelled from reading artifacts containing words we have been convinced to perceive as offensive.
So we should question those feelings of offence, to examine what it is within us that prefers to take offence, when we should really be feeling some shame for participating still, in something that perpetuates the problem.
Advertising is big business.
Shaming is big business.
Propaganda by shaming is big business.
There is a route to profit, if one has enough funds to create an “Advertising” campaign, containing a message that improves or makes us more profit.
We can see in these times of hyper-sensitivity, it is very easy to quickly raise a viral campaign on things like racism.
But what we need to observe are the long term effects.
Did the outcomes result in affairs being made better or worse for ordinary people? Were the problems solved?
Did we think we would still be marching in the streets, more than a hundred years after we thought we had it fixed?
If worse, then we need to ask who profited, and are still profiting by these apparent reductions of quality of human life for ordinary people.
We need to beware of all parties who have personal or tribal ambitions within campaigns, just like we are now aware of most politicians.
Historically, many media sources have profited hugely from shaming those who would dare to continue to use “Banned” words, when they were seemingly unanimously causing offence, communicating what was identified as “Systemic Racism”, but we should look also towards who funds, and profits from the frenzy, to spot the real Systemic Racism.
Who is at fault?
Investors.
Sometimes ordinary people!
Every time we invest in something for profit ourselves, including our time, someone else profits, unless we happen to be at the very top of the “Tree” of wealth.
In the case of ordinary people, it often costs more personally to resist, so we will often “Go with the flow”.
Such as in allowing the white-washing of history, by going along with things like never saying or writing the n-word again, and screaming encouragement for crowds physically pulling down statues.
If that profit is at someone else’s expense however distant, we ourselves are the culprits of our own disaster.
This is profit from Tribal thinking, at its most powerful, and most damaging.
The system at fault, is the one that drives us to profit at all costs, by whitewashing the truth of our own shame.
We see it on spectacular display during the COVID crisis.
Inequality appears to perpetuate itself by brainwashing ordinary people of all colours into sociopaths.
No-one is immune by race.
The real reason we have racism seems really quite simple.
The first to sieze the unfair advantage of huge inequality in the current financial system of slavery by debt, happened to have been “Whites”.
Since then, it has been maintained, mostly by effective brainwashing of that simple truth.
Therefore we still have inequality, and it is still largely held by whites.
Let’s make sure that this time, we correct what actually needs corrected.
Acknowledgements:
Thanks David Olusoga and the Observer for choosing a good moment to publish the article I used as my header, at a time when it passed under the radar of “Censors”, who might otherwise have modified that excellent, highly educational article, as in current times.
